1. Technical Field
This invention relates to line power systems. In particular, this invention relates to calculating availability for line power systems.
2. Related Art
Digital subscriber line (DSL) technology may include the digital encoding of information transmitted on a local loop, i.e., the connection between a customers premises (home, office, etc.) and a telecommunications providers central office serving the customers premises. Many existing local loops in the United States and throughout the world use twisted pair copper loops, originally designed for analog service, or plain old telephone service (POTS). With digital subscriber loop technology, high speed access to the Internet, advanced telephony functions, and multimedia services may be possible over the twisted pair copper access network. Digital subscriber systems may provide data from speeds of 64 kb/second in both upstream and downstream directions to over 10 Mb/second in a single direction.
DSL providers may be required to establish availability specifications for customers. Availability may be defined as the percentage of time that services are available, or the percentage of time that provider equipment is functioning. DSL providers often provide availability measures on the order of 5 “9's” (i.e., 0.99999 availability). To achieve this level of availability, a DSL system designer may take multiple considerations into account, such as loop circuit topology and the effect of external environmental variables on system availability. Availability calculations may become difficult and time-consuming. Availability parameters for various similar designs must be computed individually.